Enzed Transport is a blog about rail and general transport in New Zealand. There are two types of postings currently made: transport news headlines from other media, and research articles from the blog author.

Saturday, 17 June 2017

Can't remember where I got this but I suspect it would be something like Archives New Zealand facebook page or something like that. What I am sure of it is it is one of the small Leyland railcars, probably the "Midland" railcars as they were known in NZ. The impression I got was that Leyland in the UK which was a truck and bus company, and this was in the 1930s, actually did produce standard drivetrains for railbus chassis for people that wanted to build their own railbuses (because essentially that is a description of our early railcars). Photo would be from Hutt shops.

Another Hutt shops photo with several different Leyland based railbuses under construction. To be exact you have a couple of the Wairarapa railcars on the right and something smaller like a Midland over to the left rear.

This is a Fiat railcar and it shows how the Fiat engine was slotted in underneath. The Fiat engine used in these railcars was a six cylinder inline engine arranged to be horizontal so that it would fit underneath the floor of these railcars. This arrangement was similar to the Wairarapa railcars (although the arrangement for them essentially put the a standard design of engine under the cab / baggage compartment floor rather like modern vans or forward control trucks) and a departure from Standards and Vulcans which sacrificed length for a separate engine room.

Friday, 9 June 2017

Six new road and rail bridges are being built near the largest landslides that came down near Ohau Point north of Kaikoura. The bridges are being built to span areas where loose material from slips high in the mountains is being washed down to the coastline. As construction ramps up, five crews will be working on all six of the bridges. Next week piling cranes, piling hammers and a drill rig will begin arriving on site to install piles for the six bridges. They will be built at road and rail level with crews digging down to between 4m and 6m to create a space under each bridge for the material to flow out under. Each rail bridge will be 12m long and 4.6m wide, while each road bridge will span 18m and be 12m wide. Now from this I assume this means three rail bridges and three road bridges. The article doesn't say exactly where but it seems likely these three flows shown just south of 214 km. Basically out of sight to the left you have Bridge 116 and Tunnel 19. So I guess these may well be 116A, 116B and 116C but we will see what Kiwirail choose to call them.